Entry 21 IDT1415 Bax's 2003 approaches and my CALL practice

Which of the approaches identified by Bax would you say most closely approximates your own CALL practice? Provide examples to support your claim.

My Reflections...

As argued in my response to Kessler and Plakan's article about confidence in CALL, I could not agree more with Jennifer's quoting of Dunning and Kruger (1999) as a plausible explanation for the self assessment ratings given by the highly confident teachers. In terms of Bax's approaches I would say that my own practice is at level 7 in the stages of Normalisation and Integrated phase 3,  and that of my institution between 5 and 6, Fear/awe and Normalising. Victoria makes a valid and realistic point when she says that workload places normalisation at a distance making it difficult for it to become invisible. Nonetheless, I would not be as radical and add 'may' after workload, as this at least, is what occurs in my own context. I would also add that as mentioned in Kessler and Klapan's (2008:270) teacher attitude, whether positive or negative, plays a central role in their confidence and directly affects the integration process so opportunities to identify and foster a positive attitude need to be included for normalisation to be reached.

As Jennifer I believe to be in a privileged position as the private language school I work for has embraced my vision of and love for technology integration thus opening avenues for staff training, investment in technology (we have 2 IWBs, 4 laptops, 9 tablets, 3 smart TVs) and generally a positive attitude towards normalisation. I placed myself at level 7 because I started a normalising process in my workplace through the introduction of  blogs, wikis, IWBs, tablets and more and more a BYOD approach in my current context 4 years ago when I joined the school, and now we are between a healthy 5 and 6. Staff turnover typical of private language schools with seasonal work accounts for the 5 usually represented by new staff before and while they receive training through myself as Head of Teacher Training or their peers and peer observation. 

I also share Barbara's perplexity as to how it can be that almost 11 years after Bax's article she would place her institution at the same place Bax suggests institutions to be at back then: 5 and 6 and believe the answer being a composite of Kessler and Klapan's (op.cit.) teacher attitudes, the recurrent idea that technology integration must be pedagogy driven but is not often the case,  Clegg's (2003 in Bayne and Ross 2011) idea that we can either choose to embrace technology integration or watch how it unfolds and how this is more the norm than then exception, and Beatty's 'cognitive overheads' (2010:82) which if too high become taxing both for teachers and learners in terms of time and effort investment.

References

Bax, S. 2003. CALL - past, present and future [online], Article from Science Direct, Online at http://moodle.nottingham.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=1017647 [accessed: October 21, 2014].

Bayne, S. and Ross, J. 2011. 12. 'Digital Native' and 'Digital Immigrant' Discourses. A Critique. [Online], In: R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning. Sense Publishers. 159-169, Online at http://moodle.nottingham.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=1017632 [accessed: October 13, 2014].

Beatty, K. 2010. Teaching and Researching Computer-Assisted Language Learning (2nd edition). Pearson Education Limited. Online at: http://moodle.nottingham.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=1017650 [accessed: October 29, 2014].